


How to Grow

by exfatalist



Series: How-To Guides [2]
Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Alien Biology, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Canonical Character Death, Community: trope_bingo, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Team Bonding, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-05 23:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/729214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exfatalist/pseuds/exfatalist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team expands with new members and gets a base of operations - right before everything goes to hell and the Super Skrull tries to kidnap Teddy. </p><p>- </p><p>Young Avengers set in an Omegaverse, though volume 1 issues 7-12.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Grow

"I bet you could do wings," Billy speculated. 

It was a warm spring afternoon and they were both lounging in the orange and yellow stripes of the sunlight filtering in through the bedroom window. Billy had a dark bruise on his shoulder, thanks largely to Wiccan's lack of flight coordination in a fight the night before, and Teddy was spooned up behind him with an arm draped over his hip. Ever so often, Teddy nosed at the strap of Billy's black tank top, pressing little kisses to the discolored area on his shoulder. 

"Wings?" the blond asked.

"Mmhm," Billy answered lazily. "Wings. I mean, you do the stretchy arm Mr. Fantastic thing, right? Why not wings?"

Teddy huffed a soft laugh. "I don't see how the stretchy arm Mr. Fantastic thing is the same as wings." 

"It could be. Theoretically. Kind of the same."

"I'm just imagining long, flaily putty arms coming out of my back now. Thanks, B."

Billy rolled onto his stomach, almost off the edge of the bed, laughing at the mental image. In his head, it was kind of like a wacky, waving, inflatable arms-flailing tube man, except green and fleshy. Following, Teddy leaned in and nuzzled right at the center of Billy’s shoulder blades, warm and intimate and kind of helping to stop the peals of laughter by just being nice.

“Besides,” Teddy went on, “I thought it was anatomically impossible for humans to have wings. Aren’t there, you know, theories on the internet about that? Air-lift versus stress on the human rib cage or something.”

Billy laughed again and burrowed his face into the pillows, relishing in the way Teddy buried his face against his back. “Dude, you hulk out and get, like, ten times bigger than you normally are. I’m pretty sure you can change the mass or density of your bone composition. Or - I don’t know, _something_.”

Teddy pulled away with a thoughtful noise and Billy was kind of disappointed. Well, he was until Teddy’s hand moved to rest on his back, the v of his thumb and forefinger cupping the peak of one shoulder blade through his shirt fabric. “People put wings here when they draw incubus or fairies or something.”

“Mmhm,” Billy answered. He just liked the way Teddy was touching him. Teddy had strong hands that were both hesitant and confident in turns. When he touched Billy, it was light until Billy gave indication of how he felt - that it was okay, that he _liked_ it - and then Teddy’s touch became firm and sure. 

Fingertips traced nonsense patterns up the ribbed fabric of his tank top, lightly over the wide strap partially covering his bruise, then down the length of Billy’s arm, over lithe bicep. “But,” Teddy went on, “I think our arms would have to be wings for it to work. Like bats - or that one guy from that elf comic.”

“How do you explain the guy from X-Men, then?” Billy wondered, logically. That guy had wings, with feathers and everything, sprouting from his back. “He manages to fly without killing himself.”

Teddy laughed softly and slid his hand back up Billy’s arm, then lightly over his shoulder. Billy could feel fingertips pressing against his back, tracing around his shoulder blade before coming to rest near his spine. “I bet he has more hollow bones than the average mammal,” Teddy finally answered. “Like bird bones. More air-filled, with trabeculae for reinforcement. Plus, his wing span in huge. At my weight, I’d have to have twenty square feet of wing surface just to achieve lift.”

“Are you talking science and math at me, Altman?” Billy wondered. He wasn’t sure if it was hot or disappointing that his ideas were being intelligently shot down. “This is another sad reminder that our first date was _me_ trying to tutor _you_ in Trigonometry.” 

That inspired more than just a huff of laughter from Teddy. He pressed his face against Billy’s shoulder, breath warm where it caught in the cotton of Billy’s shirt, and shook with laughter for half a minute. “ _That_ was our first date?”

“Complete with my mom interrupting us,” Billy declared. “What _else_ would it be?”

“Movies?” Teddy suggested, maybe really trying to sound indignant and ultimately coming off as amused. “I’d even take the cookie dough and Mythbusters. On a scale of one to I really want to make out, I’d rate cookie dough and Mythbusters a twelve.”

That was a revelation, though Billy suspected it shouldn’t be. By now, he knew Teddy’s _I really want to kiss you_ expression and he’d been wearing it all that night. “I guess we could compromise,” Billy finally agreed. “But only if you tell me how much right now rates on that scale.”

“Off the charts,” Teddy was prompt in announcing, but wouldn’t let Billy squirm away from his grasp for a proper kiss. Instead, he kissed Billy’s shoulder again, then his neck, and succeeded in finding all the ticklish places along the way to make Billy laugh.

 

◊

 

Getting the band together (so to speak) - and keeping it together in spite of Captain America’s warnings to the contrary - made Kate the de facto leader of the team. It didn’t sit well with Eli, but not in the same way that Nate’s leadership had. Unlike Nate, Kate actually did conform to twenty-first century sextupled gender and was still unmistakably alpha, even beneath the lilac scent of _En Passant_. 

For almost two weeks, there was the disquiet of a territorial dispute as they worked out where tactician ended and team leader began. As soon as Kate conceded that Eli had tact for battle strategy, he admitted she was better at wrangling cats - which, generally, the team accepted as ‘people skills’ to keep from being too offended.

While weekends under Nate’s team leadership had been primarily about training - and sometimes pizza - it turned out Kate had a much different approach. Her approach involved Starbucks, Greek or Indian take-out, and getting the team to meet up at the old Bishop Publishing building. 

The building was musty with disuse, though it had only been closed for a few years since Bishop Publishing changed locations to accommodate a larger press, and hadn’t quite been cleared of everything. The major equipment was gone, but there were still huge, industrial shelves and haphazardly stacked pallets throughout the half of the building that used to house the printing press. There were old bins of newspapers and magazines from the starts or ends of printing runs and everything still smelled of paper, ink, or machine lubricant. The other half of the building, sectioned off by huge doors and long hallways, was all business offices that had seen better days. Windows were papered or boarded up and the carpet was bare in spots, but the infrastructure was sound, according to the building inspector Kate called in.

Their first weekend there together was dedicated to demo. They cleared out old desks, cubicle walls, and pallets, sorting it by junk, salvageable junk, and junk Teddy or Cassie wanted to DIY repurpose. Between Kate and Billy, all the load-bearing structures in the building were found on old schematics and marked with bright fluorescent spray paint to make sure no one with superpowers got overzealous while bringing down a wall. And, with three of them having super strength (or size proportionate strength), it only took a few hours to clear things like walls and doors to open up the whole building into one large, continuous space. 

Although Kate had some serious connections in the fashion industry, her local interior design connections were slightly less vetted and mostly comprised of students working on their degrees. But that was good enough to have new design plans drawn up for the space they cleared. For a few weeks after demo, they answered texts about where to meet instead of Bishop Publishing and kept speculating on what the finished product would be like.

As it turned out, for the price of a couple fewer designer dresses in her wardrobe, Kate could have had the entire project completed in just under two weeks. But that wasn’t her style. The next time they met up at the Bishop Publishing building - headquarters, the clubhouse, everyone called it something different - there were drop cloths and tarps laid out over the new floors and paint supplies in each of the new rooms. The team was going to put the finishing touches on the building.

The old press room became a gym and archery range, with padded rubber flooring and exposed brick walls, so all they had to paint was the trim around doorways in crisp white. The other side of the building was like a condo, stretching vertically up three floors. Once furniture was put in, the top floor would have bedrooms enough to house the team, the second floor would be a living and recreation area, and the very downstairs was a kitchen. 

“This is kind of amazing,” Billy offered, holding the ladder so Kate could climb up and perch on the top rung to paint trim in the kitchen. They each had an input on color swatches last week and Billy was pretty pleased that his color of choice - a red named tomato basil - looked good on the walls in the kitchen.

“Kind of?” Kate asked, her tone reading annoyed, but the upwards turn at one corner of her mouth making the question playful.

Normally, as a general rule, Billy did his best to avoid interacting with alphas. But Kate, surprisingly, projected an attitude of having a lot more going on with her life than her gender and preoccupation with the societal constraints of it. Maybe she wasn’t specifically disinterested in the things most alphas were interested in, but the majority of her attention seemed altogether focused elsewhere.

It didn’t hurt that she hadn’t once scented the air in his vicinity and spoke to him like an equal, without a hint of condescension or sarcasm. 

The playful annoyance, though, threw Billy for a loop, but it only took him a moment to find his footing and grin. “ _Really amazing_ ,” he corrected.

“Damn right.” After a pause for more paint, she said: “So, Teddy wants holes in the back of his new costume. He did that adorable blushy thing when I asked him about it and told me to talk to you.”

At first, he was distracted by Kate describing his boyfriend with the words ‘adorable’ and ‘blushy,’ but that kind of - yeah, that was exactly what Teddy did sometimes. It took him a little longer to work out that he was supposed to be answering an unspoken question.

“Oh. Right. Well - I was kind of speculating that he could give himself wings.”

Kate grinned. “Tired of lugging him everywhere, Magic Lad?”

“No!” Billy rushed to assure her. After being subject to an incredulous look, complete with cocked eyebrow, he admitted, “Just, you know, I _suck_ at flying. Still.”

Kate passed down her paint brush when she was done with the last stretch of trim, then came back down the ladder. “We have a twenty foot ceiling in the gym. You can get in lots of practice without worrying about someone seeing you. But if he still wants to try wings, I can get Hulkling’s wardrobe altered.”

“...wardrobe?”

She rolled her eyes. “We’re bound to get rips and tears in our costumes and I sure as hell don’t know how to sew. It’s just easier to get multiples, right?”

Billy wondered if this was what it was like for the Avengers, living with Tony Stark. But, well, he didn’t know if Kate would appreciate that sentiment after their last run-in with Iron Man left them operating outside Avengers’ approval. Instead, he found himself grinning again. “Right.”

After the impromptu paint party, there was the ‘big reveal,’ which Cassie joked was kind of like those shows on HGTV. With the furniture and gym equipment in, the building ceased to be Bishop Publishing (even if the outside still bore the name, for the sake of blending in with the neighborhood) and became theirs. Each member of the team got a key and their handprint scanned into the state of the art security system.

The best part, Kate said, was the basement - which no one knew even existed until that afternoon. Down an industrial staircase still accessible from the gym, Kate led them into what used to be the press morgue, where back issues of magazines and newspapers had been stored for posterity. Everything had been cleared out and redone, replacing the cold, dry basement with something sleek and modern and -

“Is this a panic room?” Eli wondered. He sounded just as confused as everyone else by the vault doors on either side of the narrow hallway.

“That is,” Kate admitted, pointing to the larger of the two. “With an escape route through an old subway line.” But she wasn’t interested in actually showing them the panic room. Instead, Kate stuck her thumb into the reader to the right of the smaller door across the hall and opened it when the reader beeped, revealing an armory and racks of identical costumes for each of them. “This is storage.”

Eli stared, first at the armory and then at Kate, before throwing his hands up in exasperated defeat. “This is what it’s like living with Tony Stark, isn’t it?”

Kate looked unimpressed. “I’m pretty sure I have more style in my little finger than Stark has in his whole company,” she countered.

Billy was glad he’d kept his mouth shut when he thought the same thing the other day.

“It’s awesome, Kate,” he assured. “It’s really awesome.”

 

◊

 

Three days later, they found Eli in Mr. Hyde’s warehouse and everything ceased to make sense. The five of them were supposed to be a team, but by the end of the day they weren’t anymore. Eli quit and, under pressure from Captain America, the rest of them reluctantly agreed that they needed to think about their futures. It was an extremely tactful approach, with Kate never outright saying the team was shut down, but after Captain America’s public endorsement of them disbanding, that was all the news wanted to talk about.

They all agreed amongst themselves to lie low and wait for the media frenzy to blow over. It meant staying away from Bishop Publishing, not using their powers in public, and only doing something contrary to those first two things if it was absolutely necessary, like in the case of a mugging in progress.

It was a difficult week and at the end of it, Kate called a team meeting outside the library where Eli worked the reference desk part time - and they all knew what it meant. He wouldn’t return their calls or texts, so it was time to take the discussion to him. 

The discussion would have been a good one, too. They all had very good, very compelling arguments about why Eli should continue to be on the team, even without superpowers, but it never really got off the ground properly. Before any of them knew what was happening, Teddy had been plucked out of the group by the Super Skrull.

Billy stood, feet rooted to the ground, and stared as Teddy struggled with the Super Skrull, practically every one of the Fantastic Four’s combined powers on display at once as they fought. Then Teddy shifted, his entire back rippling with spikes, and forced the Super Skrull to drop him. Billy was halfway through a levitation spell when Teddy changed again, massive leathery wings unfurling from his back and torso expanding with musculature. It was everything they talked about - the wingspan, the positioning, the body mass - and it was absolutely gorgeous.

So gorgeous, in fact, that Eli had to reach out and yank the back of Billy’s hoodie to pull him out of the line of fire when the Super Skrull attacked.

He stepped right back in after that, ready with Kate to cover Teddy’s escape, but the whole world sort of shifted sideways when Billy remembered _hypnosis_ was on the very long list of powers the Super Skrull boasted. By the time his head fully cleared, there was a sizeable dent in an office building ten blocks away, suspiciously Super Skrull shaped, and they were all making a mad dash for the nearest subway station. 

“Nice wings,” Billy said, once they were all - sans Eli - safe inside a subway car. He shrugged out of his hoodie and offered it over to Teddy, whose clothes were in tatters after his bout of shapeshifting. 

Teddy was reluctant to take the hoodie, blushing bright pink from his cheeks to the exposed tops of his shoulders. “Thanks. But, uh, I’ll just end up shredding this, if the Super Skrull finds us again.”

“I don’t mind,” Billy assured. It was a new hoodie, sure, but it didn’t compare to any of the old, well-worn favorites at the very bottom of his hamper still waiting for laundry day, one of which was actually Teddy’s.

The blond smiled and pulled the hoodie on, effortlessly shrinking to fit into it properly. “So, uh, you liked the wings, huh?”

“They were great,” he sort of - entirely - gushed. “Did you do the bird bone thing, too?”

“Yeah,” Teddy confirmed, his smile sheepish. “I think, anyway. It was totally weird. I was just thinking about wings and my body sort of did it automatically. Like instinct.”

Billy couldn’t help but grin at that. He leaned a little closer, reached out for Teddy’s hand, and was promptly interrupted by Kate sounding exasperated. “Can you guys flirt some time when we’re not having an aliens attacking us sort of situation?”

It was Billy’s turn to blush, then, but Teddy refused to let go of his hand, even as the car arrived at their stop and they all filed out. 

 

◊

 

There were only a few days between their averting another Kree-Skrull War and the team defeating the, as Speed put it, Zodiac at the United Nations. Putting the U.N. building back together gave Billy enough practice to do the same at home, fixing the huge hole in the wall left by the Super Skrull. It didn’t really do much to fix his parents’ opinion of his extra curricular activities or change the fact that his mother watched a woman burn to death in their living room, but it got them back to their condo and out of a temporary living situation with his grandmother.

Teddy’s living situation was much different. He didn’t have a grandmother to live with in the aftermath of his mother’s death and, as such, had been bunking at the Bishop Publishing building for a few days. Billy was there almost as often, until curfew took him back home, and Tommy seemed to have taken up residence there, as well, claiming absolutely no desire to commute between there and Jersey. Teddy seemed to be doing all right, seemed to be holding it together, but Billy was worried he was just going through the motions.

“How is Ted doing?” Billy’s dad asked one evening over dinner.

Billy had been staring at his brothers across the table, watching them play fight with their dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, and didn't immediately parse the question. After a moment, he blinked and looked up at his father. “I can’t tell,” he admitted, awkwardly. “He doesn’t - I don’t think he’s realized what happened yet.”

“It’s common,” Billy’s mother chimed in. “With the unexpected death of a loved one. Sometimes we just don't know how to react."

Jeff nodded in agreement, but went on along another vein. "We were talking about what would happen to Ted. If your mother and I understand things correctly, he isn’t human?”

Billy just nodded, not sure if he could deny Teddy’s parentage after everything that happened.

“Which means he probably doesn’t have extended family to care for him now that his mother is gone,” Jeff went on speculatively.

When Billy nodded again, his parents exchanged worried looks. “Billy,” his dad said seriously, “where is Ted staying right now?”

Which is how it all came out at the dinner table. Some superheroes struggled with secret identities, for the sake of their loved ones’ safety, but Billy couldn’t seem to keep much from his parents, even when he tried. When he started talking, he just didn’t stop. He talked about the team, talked about how Cassie and Kate joined, how they found Vision and Tommy, talked about Kate being their own sort of Tony Stark and remodeling one of her dad’s old buildings for them to use as a base of operations, talked about how Teddy was staying there, probably because he couldn’t stand to go home. He even talked about how he felt about Teddy, how Teddy was different from everyone else and how safe that made him feel, his cheeks burning with embarrassment and his eyes brimming with tears. 

And then, just like that, it was all out. He felt like a deflated balloon and flopped back in his seat, expression a mix of relief and worry. His little brothers were staring at him, as if trying to find a way to make fun of whatever parts of that they understood, but his dad was already on his feet, leaving the dining room and that was commotion enough for the two of them.

Billy watched his dad leave, worried he’d said too much, and was too afraid to look over at his mom to see her expression.

Just as he was contemplating whether or not he would have to move into the base as well, his dad reappeared with a jacket on, holding Billy’s out to him. “Come on,” Jeff urged. “Let’s go bring Ted home.”

He hesitated, but slowly got up from the dinner table and took the jacket his dad held out for him. It took him a moment to realize what his dad meant, that they wouldn’t be taking Teddy back to the apartment where he had lived with his mother, but would be bringing Teddy home to stay with them. 

Billy’s smile was slow to appear and he glanced between his parents before asking, “Really?”

“Really,” his dad confirmed with a kind smile, while his mom gave an encouraging nod.

 

◊

 

The condo roof allowed access to residents and had a smattering of nice deck furniture arranged on it. It had been a part of Billy’s tour of the building after Teddy moved in with them and he wasn’t surprised by how often he found Teddy sitting up there, as spring wore on into summer and the weather turned nicer. 

Tonight was no different. He took the elevator to the top floor and let himself out onto the roof, scanning around until he found Teddy seated precariously on the ledge, just enjoying the deep orange of an overcast sunset. The first time Billy found him like this, he had been particularly worried, but each subsequent time he just needed to remind himself that Teddy really liked the view and wasn’t particularly afraid of heights.

“Hey,” Billy greeted from far enough away to give Teddy forewarning of his approach. Teddy glanced back over his shoulder and offered Billy a small smile. Taking that as permission, Billy stepped right up to the ledge and leaned against it next to Teddy.

“Am I missing dinner?” Teddy wondered after a long stretch of silence. 

Billy smiled and tilted his head against Teddy’s side. “Yeah,” he gently confirmed. "But dad will save us some, if you want to sit up here for a while."

“If that’s okay ... ” 

It was an uncertain answer and Billy instinctively knew to solidify it into certainty. “I kind of want a break,” he admitted. “My brothers discovered the magical powers of The Song That Never Ends.”

Teddy laughed softly, then shifted a little, encouraging Billy up and onto the ledge with him. Billy was hesitant, but eventually settled with his feet over the edge next to Teddy. He had to convince himself not to look down, had to reassure himself that he could fly if he concentrated hard enough, and the way Teddy put an arm around his shoulders helped immensely. 

“I feel bad, you know,” Teddy eventually offered, his head tilted so the words were half mumbled against Billy’s hair. “Staying here. Your parents are so nice, Billy.”

Billy closed his eyes and just listened, listened to the way Teddy’s breath hitched and the way his words thickened in his throat, knowing the sound of oncoming tears better than anything. He’d only seen Teddy cry, really cry, once before and that was in the statuary garden the afternoon of his mom’s memorial. 

“But I don’t - I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Teddy went on and by then the tears were flowing, Billy could feel a few warm drops hitting his scalp. “I don’t want to go anywhere else. I’m scared someone will find out, the authorities, and I’ll have to leave and that’s worse than the Kree or the Skrulls.”

He waited until the torrent of Teddy’s emotional outpouring slowed and then he carefully shifted, raising his head to look at his boyfriend properly. “I know,” Billy answered steadily, reaching out to brush tears from the other boy’s cheek with the back of his hand. “We’re not going to let anything like that happen, Ted. And we just want you to be okay. So ... if you want to stay here, then we’re happy to have you. Don’t feel bad about that, okay?”

Teddy nodded, though it took a long moment for him to do so, and with a little encouragement from Billy he leaned in and put his head down on Billy’s shoulder, burying his face against the worn cotton of Billy’s t-shirt and letting himself be dragged under by the tears he’d been valiantly fighting. He sobbed, quiet at first and then increasingly staccato, breathing ragged and chest heaving with the force of his grief. Billy just held him, perched there precariously on the wide ledge of the roof, and stroked his back until the sun painted the sky in a deep amber bleeding into navy and the tears began to dry up into sniffles.

When Teddy sat up, his face was an embarrassing mess and Billy offered him the hem of his t-shirt for a tissue. 

Teddy laughed, his eyes brimming with tears all over again. “My - my mom used to let me wipe my nose on her sleeve, you know?” he said, bewildered and amused and sad all at once. “When I was really little. And, even then, I thought ... you gotta _really_ love someone to do something like that.”

Billy blinked away a few tears of his own, then lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe Teddy’s cheeks and chin. He paused, then took a swipe at his boyfriend’s snotty nose, too. “Yeah. You do.”

It wasn’t _I love you_ , but it was close enough - and sincere enough - to make Teddy smile, genuinely smile. 

Along the distant horizon where night had already settled, a rumble of thunder and flash of lightning prefaced the storm rolling in. Within moments, the first few lazy splatters of raindrops hit the rooftop. 

“Ready to go in yet?” Billy wondered. He didn’t mind staying, even if it meant getting a little wet in the drizzle.

Teddy shrugged, popped a few seams in his shirt, and sprouted green leathery wings that only looked a little out of place against his pale skin. He tucked himself closer to Billy again and folded the wings around them, protecting them both from the rain. It was warm, like being pulled into a hug, and Billy could hear the rain as it pelted Teddy’s skin at long, random intervals. 

“Maybe a little longer?” Teddy suggested.

“Sure,” Billy agreed. 

They could stay on the roof as long as Teddy needed.


End file.
